The more talking you do, the less information you will receive. Your role is that of a buyer. You are thinking about purchasing services from the person you’re interviewing. Asking questions and evaluating the responses are your key functions. Picture yourself at a car dealership, talking to a salesperson about the possible purchase of a car. Who should be doing most of the talking? Who should be answering the most questions? In both cases the answer is the person selling, not the person buying. The person asking the questions gets the most information.

Your questions should seek information on specific issues and also let you uncover personality traits. Listen for comments that include attitudes, energy levels, and the ability to communicate concisely and to answer the question asked, not the one the interviewee wants to answer. None of this can be accomplished when you are doing the majority of the talking.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

One of the best ways to get people to achieve excellence is to inspire them through your own example. No matter how much you talk or what you do, if you aren’t stretching and growing, if you aren’t giving until it hurts, forget about asking them to do so.

Most Olympic athletes got to where they are because they were inspired by an Olympic athlete who preceded them. Few of us, if any, have the capacity to be self-inspired. We need another person to help light the flame. You are their role model. How your people perform will always reflect to some degree the behavior and ideals you live out day-to-day basis.

Virtually everything you do in some way implies a standard to your people—the way you dress, the way you interact with peers and superiors, whether or not you start your meetings on time, the quality of your work. It is a good idea to do a quick check on yourself from time to time to see if you are performing the way you want your people to perform.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

The market, or trading area for a particular firm, is the area which it seeks to serve with its products or services. From the buyer’s point of view, it is the area within which the buyer knows he or she can find desired goods and services at desired prices. The definition of a market, or trading area, from the buyer’s and the seller’s view may not be the same. Sellers may desire to expand their markets beyond the limits that are normally recognized by buyers. Experience will tell merchants the proper limits of their trading areas if they have the means of measuring the sources of sales. Market areas may change with the development of new shopping centers in adjacent areas. At any given time, a market has its limits set by the area within which the firm can economically sell its goods or services.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Make it a habit to do an environmental scan when doing strategic planning.

If your specialty is strategy, use your team and peers to help develop tactics.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Having standards is not enough. They must be the correct standards. By correct means not too low, not too high. If you set them too low you will lose productivity; valuable resources will be wasted. Low standards are also demotivating. Challenge and job satisfaction go hand in hand. When standards are too low people become sloppy in their work. When they can do their jobs with their eyes closed, their attention is lost and needless errors are made.

Standards that are too high are a problem as well. When standards are unrealistically high, the manager has no yardstick for determining how well the people performed. The standard is meaningless. Standards that are too high are also demotivating. If people know that the standards are impossible, they will reason “Why try at all? We can’t reach them anyway.” The standards become a source of frustration. If people consistently strive to meet the standards without success, they will feel like failures which will eventually affect their morale and performance.

The goal is to set standards high enough so that people have to work exceptionally hard to reach them and low enough so that they are attainable.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Perhaps the biggest difference between an individual businessperson and a large corporation is in the degree of flexibility each possesses. Here the balance tips in favor of the small business. Because it hasn’t indoctrinated numerous level of management and a gigantic sales organization in the tactics and strategies of its marketing plan, it can make changes on the spot. It can be fast on its feet and can react to make changes, competitive ploys, economic realities, new media, newsworthy events, and last minute offers.

Like the furry quick mammal, you’ve got the flexibility, the speed, the disregard of image, that enables you to use radio commercials and also hire high school students to hand out printed circulars on street corners. You don’t have a body of rules to follow, a committee to answer to, a set structure to follow. You are the organization. You answer to yourself. You make the rules and you break the rules. And that means you get to be amazing, outrageous, surprising, unpredictable, brilliant, and quick.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

An important aspect of learning is its intangibility. Learning is non-observable; it takes place within people and can only be inferred from actual behavior. For this reason, it is called an intervening variable. Because it must be inferred from behavior, it is often difficult to measure: other factors influence behavior, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish what part of the behavior is attributable to learning. Two men may be assigned a task and given instructions on how to accomplish it. One may achieve much better results than the other, but that does not necessarily mean he has learned more. He may have had more ability to begin with, or he may have had a greater motivation to succeed than the other.

Performance is the result of learning, ability, motivation, and a variety of external factors. One man may produce more even having learned less because his ability or motivation enables him to perform more effectively. A student who works hard in a course and learns a great amount may see another student work less hard, appear to learn less, but receive a high grade. Such situations are common both in school and in the business world. The factor sometimes overlooked is the initial degree of skill or knowledge brought to the task, and the resultant effect on performance. Often it is performance that is observed, judged, and rewarded.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.